And so it goes…

Here’s a few small thoughts derived from reviewing various remarks that have been left here with regards to the recent unpleasantness concerning certain personal slights of a defamatory nature and the subsequent hoo-ha over that.

If the people making such libelous comments don’t have the spine, moral gumption or basic decency to attach themselves to a REAL name (and all the other details and “real world” consequences associated with that), then maybe they should just shut the fuck up. It’s one thing to talk “words to power” or otherwise rail against the machine under the guise of a pseudonym, but quite another to take gratuitous and maliciously destructive pot shots at individuals referencing their REAL names, in addition to leveling baseless smears, lies and general bullshit about their personal lives under the cloak of anonymity.

There are many bloggers who pose under fanciful online names (for a variety of reasons — some quite perfectly legitimate; others… well, not so much) but who nonetheless behave responsibly and who understand the distinctions involved between the online world and the real world consequences of their postings. In this regard, I watched a talk earlier today on the social impacts of globalization that touched on this subject and mentioned the fact over half of companies now routinely employ software to ferret out details of the online activities of potential hires — “Google is the new resume” was the take-away phrase from that lecture. This is part of the reason that I was so agitated about the misinformation being disseminated by some “Anonymous” poster(s) and the reckless, thoroughly irresponsible attitude of another blogger that quite happily offered up a platform for its dissemination.

But it’s a hopeless endevour to struggle against this disturbing tide of calumny. Anonymous cowards, gutless wonders, phonies, and faceless Lib4effer-type poseurs will always be with us… not to mention the craven miscreants, liars, frauds, delusional fabulists, crackpots, loons, nutjobs and the inevitable assortment of bottom-feeding, scum-sucking riff-raff, rabble and yappa-dappa ding-dongs that, in the apparent absence of productive lives, delight in the wantonly malicious character assassination of others. Such is the glorious nature of our so-called “political discourse” these days.

It’s the choice we make when deciding to publish opinions online using real names, I guess. In the course of doing so we may be exposed to a lot of malicious, hateful bullshit and outright misinformation about us. Whether it actually has any destructive effect remains to be seen. It would be nice to think that such rubbish doesn’t and that it may be more reasonably viewed within the depraved and hopelessly debased context of online “discourse” and the various lies and fabrications pedaled by miscreants are all just simply regarded with a deep amount of skepticism and the profound contempt for the source of which most are fully deserving of.

The Joy of Moving

I was thinking of just leaving this post blank to make my point, but it might not have been immediately apparent that a completely empty post was deliberate.

Well, thank goodness it’s over. Or at least the worst part of it — the sorting through old, useless and completely inexplicable crap, disposing of the immense amounts of rubbish and assorted detritus that a family gradually and relentlessly accumulates over several years… broken appliances, old clothes, cast-off footwear, barely used sporting equipment, inappropriate Christmas gifts, whimsical acquisitions, stacks of mysterious paperwork, and so forth. Then haphazardly boxing up the rest…And finally, the awful task of cleaning up and expunging the filth routinely generated by existence. I have to confess that I’d never tackled the joyless task of cleaning an oven before — what a disgusting, filthy, and utterly gross undertaking.

After my wife left recently (an issue I might address at some future date to contradict the LIES and distortions being spread by an idiot blogger and malicious “Anonymous” fuckwits) and peeled off a whole bunch of furniture and other things, thereby leaving me with a lot of rooms that were either completely empty or at least greatly denuded, I’d kind of fooled myself into thinking that I no longer had all that much “stuff” and was now perhaps moving towards my ultimate Zen Buddhist goal of being free of possessions, but boy was I wrong! Even though last week I went to the local dump with a trailer load of crap and hurled it all with immense joy into the maw of a waiting dumpster, I was still left with… a rather astounding pile of things. And worse, even still more garbage precipitated by the moving process.

The good part of this winnowing out however is that the remaining possessions are, for the most part, all stuff that I actually want to keep. For example, I have more books and CDs than you can shake a stick at. Heck, I could start my own small library! You name it and I’ve got it.

So now with the back-breaking job of physically carting all the remaining stuff from the old to new place (a punishing task that couldn’t have been accomplished without the invaluable assistance of my son, who heroically came to my aid in this respect), there’s the somewhat more rewarding business of reconstructing everything — taking what had been boxed up just days ago and now putting it in a new place. It still looks completely chaotic, which is more than a little unnerving sensation for the orderly, long-repressed “control freak” side of my nature to deal with, but it’s slowly getting there. I was up at 4:00 AM this morning (forgot to set my clock back) trying to figure out ponderous questions of great significance like the best kitchen cabinet location for breakfast cereal boxes and where my microwave should go… Should I put all my spices in this cupboard or that one… and is there a logical order involved to the disposition of all this Zip-Loc plasticware?

Then there’s the fun of hassling with utilities about non-functioning cable outlets, various disputes over a whole range of unresolved grievances with my landlord, attempts to get equitable compensation from my significant other, etc. I could go on, but it’s all quite tedious — just the kind of bullshit one encounters in life from time to time for various reasons. Most of us have been there, done that before and it’s almost never a pleasant experience, although it’s nice when the upside finally starts to kick in. Sorry for the self-indulgent ramble. It’s more just by way of an explanation that if blogging is infrequent and somewhat off the mark in the coming days and weeks…